Katsidis: the agony and the ecstasy

Chris Roots

The path to the top has been littered with obstacles for the rider of this year's Golden Slipper favourite. Chris Roots reports.

Stathi Katsidis admits he took ecstasy - he served a nine-month ban after testing positive to it in 2008. He also insists he wasn't the only sportsman to take the party drug, claiming "about half" of jockeys and football players take it. It's a claim that will send tremors through the football and racing industries. But Katsidis is not bitter. Instead, he credits the whole episode with helping him turn around his life.

"I took it when I wasn't riding about three or four times a year," says Katsidis, who tomorrow will steer favourite Military Rose in the $3.5m AAMI Golden Slipper. "It goes on - footy players and jockeys [take it]. Well probably about half of them might do it. When you take things like that it was good for your weight because instead of drinking piss you drink water.

"It was a Sunday night when I did it and my manager rang on the Monday and said, 'Jim Byrne has been suspended, can you ride these horses on Wednesday?' I said, 'Yeah'. 'Three days, it will be out of my system,' I thought - because generally it's two days and you're right. I got tested and I had a feeling. I was only just over, but I was over."

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Katsidis couldn't have known it at the time, but the suspension passed down by Queensland stewards turned out to be a blessing. His return to racing was conditional upon his attendance at a rehabilitation course, and Katsidis credits the two-week program with helping salvage his controversy-prone career.

Not only did the enforced break force him to reassess his wayward path in life, it also allowed him time to develop his relationship with Melissa Jackson; a long-time friend who would become his soulmate. While working as a breaker on a stud farm to pay the bills, Katsidis found the ballast in life that had previously eluded him. "When I went positive for drugs, I had to do a two-week rehab course to get two months off my sentence," he says. "It helped with the way I think about things now. I was lucky because I was an outpatient. They said I wasn't that far gone. I had to drive there every day - six days a week - and saw where I could end up. I learned it was not really about drugs but it is about life management. It's the major thing that makes me more dedicated now."

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The notion of Katsidis riding the 2010 Golden Slipper favourite seemed implausible two years ago. The nine-month suspension seemed a continuation of a self-destructive past. He had previously twice tested positive for a banned appetite suppressant, and been arrested for drink-driving in a matter that almost resulted in a jail term.

In 2003, Katsidis first returned a positive test for Duromine, which he used to control his weight. "Back then I was always suspended and struggling to ride 55, 56 [kilograms]," he says. He failed a second test for the same drug after Victoria Derby day in 2007 and was banned for a month. On his return he secured a ride on Gold Edition and it seemed he was back on track. But things soon started to unravel.

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After riding Gold Edition in the 2008 Lightning Stakes, in what was to be her final start, Katsidis headed back to Brisbane as usual. He decided to have a drink on the plane.

"I was just loose at the time," he admits. "I rode Gold Edition and drank all the way. We had a lift organised [back to Toowoomba for an awards night] but the bloke couldn't make it for some reason. I said, 'F--- it, we'll drive'. The other bloke was more pissed than me, so I said, 'I'll drive'. The other bloke wanted to but I said I wanted to get up there safe."

It would have been a hair-rising journey, with Katsidis more than three times over the legal limit. The police received a call telling them a car was speeding and being driven erratically near Toowoomba. They stopped it and Katsidis was breathalysed. He failed. Worse was to follow, with a police search of the car unearthing ecstasy and a steroid.

"It was just stupid," Katsidis says. "The cops found the tabs in the car and the clenbuterol, which I was taking back then. I was always looking for the easy ways out back then. Clenbuterol strips fat from your body and it worked but, once again, it was a short cut. After talking to a couple of doctors I found out how bad that stuff is for you. You get shakes on it and it's bad for your heart."

Katsidis's mate copped the rap for the ecstasy tablet but by the time the jockey was back in court in June to plead guilty to possession of clenbuterol without a prescription, which earned him a $500 fine, he was in trouble again, this time with stewards. He tested positive to ecstasy in May. It would be the start of 18 months away from racing.

Katsidis has been riding for 18 years but he will tell you he has been doing it properly for just 18 months since he ditched the party-boy attitude to focus on becoming the best jockey in the country.

"I have always ridden the same - I have been a brilliant rider," he says of a career in which he won his first group 1 race as a 19-year-old apprentice. "But I lacked the finer things. The past couple of years I been more professional and just grown up."

Katsidis knows the shortcuts and knows they don't work. He has won a fortune and has also had a good time blowing it. He doesn't own a house and is determined to make the most of his second chance to set himself up for life.

"I started doing this [riding] when I was 13 or 14 and then really serious from 15 to 19," he says. "The dedication needed to make it then meant I didn't go out and drink. I didn't do what all the kids were doing my age. I won my first group 1 at 19 on Show A Heart in the TJ Smith and started to do things I didn't do when 17, 18, 19. It took me another six years to win my next group 1 because I was living my childhood. I'd ride for a few months and then take a month [off]. It took 2008 for me to stop and say, 'What am I doing'?"

While he was serving his nine-month suspension for testing positive to ecstasy, Katsidis worked as a breaker on a stud farm and developed his relationship with Jackson. By Christmas, he had asked her to marry him. Maybe now his luck was turning.

But fate had other ideas and just days before he was to return to the saddle, a horse he was breaking reared and came crashing down on his leg with enough force to break it.

"I was lucky I had really good motorbike pants so I didn't see it but I had bone sticking out of both sides of my leg," he says. "I'd been out for seven months and was keen to get back riding. But I still didn't have my weight sorted out, so breaking my leg was probably a blessing in disguise. I was another eight months out but I got real light and was walking around 52 kilograms because I lost all my bulk and muscle definition. It was then I thought, 'I am meant to be a jockey'."

When he eventually returned to the track in Brisbane, he rode winner after winner. On the track, it was the same old jockey - full of talent and flair. But off it, Katsidis had changed - no more taking the easy route, no more taking his talent for granted. "I had realised myself that there are no short cuts - you just have to do the work," he says. "I'm on a low sodium diet and Melissa makes sure I stick to it. She is so important to my success."

Katsidis has also become a mentor for apprentices. It is about as far away as he could get from the wild man of two years ago. He sets the best example by being a winner. He has won the Magic Millions with Military Rose, the Karaka Millions on Sister Havana and the Randwick Guineas with his derby ride Shoot Out in 2010. "It helps working with the kids because I say do this and do that and then I think I should probably be doing that as well," he says. "I have had apprentices come to me and say, 'Should I take this [drug]', and I say to them, 'You can take it but it is a short-term fix'."

While Katsidis doesn't want to forget the past and the lows that started him on his path to redemption, he prefers to focus on the future. "I'm not going to say I never did drugs or tried ecstasy or drunk as much as I did," he says. "But during that time I experienced a lot of things that make me the person I am today. That's my nature - I'll take gaps six inches wide and I love the thrill of it. But I had to learn you have to choose your times. I have."